This invention relates to bottle carriers, and more particularly to molded plastic carriers for bottles such as filled soft drink bottles.
The invention is especially concerned with a topgrip bottle carrier, i.e., a carrier which grips a plurality of bottles, e.g., a cluster of six bottles arranged in two rows of three each (a "six-pack"), by the bottle necks, and is generally in the same class as and involves an improvement upon the bottle carrier with a "loop bar" shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,235,468 issued Nov. 25, 1980. In general, that bottle carrier has three bottle grippers constituted by collars (10) in a row on each side thereof, the collars being within a frame (11), and a so-called loop bar (12) for encircling the bottles supported by struts (13). Apparatus has been developed for automatically applying carriers similar to the carrier shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,235,468 to clusters of six bottles, the apparatus being operable automatically to dispense carriers from a supply, place them on clusters, and then push them down for causing them to grip the bottles in the clusters. Such apparatus will operate generally satisfactorily on the aforesaid prior art carriers provided each carrier is initially placed on a six-bottle cluster in what may be referred to as centered relation with respect to the cluster, i.e., with the six bottle grippers of the carrier centered with respect to the six bottles in the cluster, but it happens too frequently that the carrier is not so centered for being pushed down on the bottles in the cluster, and the carriers, as a result, may be broken.